Search form

To C. C. Babington 20 January [1862]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

Jan 20th

Dear Babington

I thank you for your kind & very valuable letter. I shall have some future opportunity of quoting your cases, which are quite new to me.2 I think Stellaria graminea grows here (but I know our British plant very imperfectly) & I must look sharp after it & get its seeds.— As for Hottonia I shall never see it. I know you are a great wanderer in summer: if you ever come across it, would you have the kindness to send me a few fresh spec. in a tin cannister by Post, for I should much like to see its pollen & speculate on manner of action of insects. Lecoq, I have just observed, says that Menyanthes is similarly dimorphic.3 Perhaps where Hottonia grows Menyanthes would also grow. Koch says that Polemonium & Pyrola (according to Lecoq) are likewise dimorphic but I shall, never get to see these & still less to experiment on them, which is the really requisite thing.—4

As I have been begging favours, I will venture to ask you when next at your Botanic Garden to enquire whether the Curator by chance possesses seeds of any of the plants of which I will write a list, & which I much require for different experiments. I know it is a mere chance.—5

My health prevents me walking & that terribly interferes with my getting what I want. And now Mr. Borrer is dead, from whom I expected much.—6 The varieties of Verbascum I want much to test Gärtners experiments.7

CD’s reference is ambiguous. He began reading Lecoq 1854–8 in December 1861 (see Correspondence vol. 9, letters to J. D. Hooker, [9 December 1861] and 28 [December 1861]). Pyrola and Polemonium are discussed in Lecoq 1854–8, 7: 356–62 and 413–14, respectively, but Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch is not cited. Lecoq identified Pyrola as being dimorphic in a section that CD highlighted in his copy of the work (p. 357), but did not identify Polemonium as being dimorphic. CD had borrowed a copy of Koch 1843–4 from Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1857 (see Correspondence vol. 6). Koch discussed Pyrola and Polemonium in Koch 1843–4, 2: 550–1 and 568, respectively; however, he did not identify either as being dimorphic, but remarked with respect to Polemonium coeruleum: ‘Flores caerulei, rarius albi’ [Flowers blue, more rarely white].

In Origin, pp. 270–1, CD discussed experiments carried out on Verbascum by Karl Friedrich von Gärtner, in which crosses between differently coloured varieties of the same or of different species produced less seed than the parallel crosses between similarly coloured varieties (see Gärtner 1844, pp. 137–8, and Gärtner 1849, pp. 92, 180–1, 724–8; there are heavily annotated copies of these volumes in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 248–98)). These experiments were important to CD in countering an objection to natural selection based on the belief that there is ‘some essential distinction between species and varieties’ and that varieties always ‘cross with perfect facility, and yield perfectly fertile offspring’ (Origin, p. 268; see also letter to T. H. Huxley, 14 [January 1862] and n. 7). He had been anxious for some time to repeat Gärtner’s experiments, and had sought specimens and assistance from botanical acquaintances (see Correspondence vol. 9). In December 1862, having failed to obtain the requisite varieties, CD persuaded John Scott to undertake the experiments on his behalf (see letters to John Scott, 19 November [1862] and 11 December [1862], and letter from John Scott, 17 December [1862]).